If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
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Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#2I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven.
I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all my relaxing at home. And I was happy, and loved both.
Testing for 1 thing because you want something related is a big mistake. You can easily have both false positives and false negatives. And since you're testing for the wrong thing, you won't know until it's too late. If you ever do.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#3I used to think this too, but now my position is more nuanced. Certainly you need to have shown you have a passion for technology that goes beyond the norm, but there are other reasons you might not have lots of recent code outside of work. Maybe you have a family. Or maybe you have such a fulfilling current job that you don't feel the need to supplement it with extracurricular activities. Maybe you are interested in developing non-technical skills that would make you more useful in the future. Etc.
But some positions do require that Olympic athlete mindset. For other positions it's a detriment.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#4I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven. I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all…
"Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion"
How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#5I consider myself very passionate about programming. I do a lot of research and learn about programming in my spare time, but have hardly any personal programming projects to show. After work, instead of grinding away coding like I do every day, I'm learning how to draw, and paint, and play music. Does this mean I'm not qualified for this .NET position?
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#6I always suspect these people are actually looking for developers who will work long hours with little pay, because they are so driven. They aren't looking for the best and brightest, just the most driven. I think it's actually quite easy to 'care' without having a driving passion that forces you to give your life over to programming. In fact, I did it for a number of years. I did all my programming at work, and all…
"Put simply, we are looking for a .NET developer and one of the most important things that we look for is passion" How much passion is there in the .NET scene anyway? It's very business oriented, I'd expect developers to be more sort of corporate and better at time reporting. It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
It's not like you have to be a hipster to churn out spreadsheet automation scripts.
You also don't have to be a hipster to contribute to open source or be passionate about your craft. What makes you think he's looking for a hipster?
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#7Additionally, the author of the article is potentially weeding out the exact people his company is looking for. Some (myself, as an example) are passionate about what they do for their job, to the point where they do development on work projects in their spare time. Presumably that person is better than the aspiring OSS developer who grinds their job for 8 hours only to go home and work on their pet project.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#8I used to think this too, but now my position is more nuanced. Certainly you need to have shown you have a passion for technology that goes beyond the norm, but there are other reasons you might not have lots of recent code outside of work. Maybe you have a family. Or maybe you have such a fulfilling current job that you don't feel the need to supplement it with extracurricular activities. Maybe you are interested in…
Maybe your employment contract states that anything you create is owned by your company so there is no code "outside of work." The question then becomes whether that is a contingency that has affected your passion or not.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#9I find its a scale, from people who would rather do nothing when not at work to people where their work suffers from all the other stuff they are doing. My ideal candidates are somewhere in the middle of that scale.
There are two interesting things you can learn about people this way, one is where their passions lay and the other is what their time management skills are like. Someone who works feverishly on 20 things and gets nothing done, or folks who consistently pop out one or two things a month, month after month, in their 'spare' time.
Interestingly a bias that perhaps the OP recognizes shows up in this blarticle (what do you call one entry in a blog anyway). What if the candidate sent a picture of a 6 piece mahogany dining room set (because they spent all their spare time wood working) or an MP3 of their latest composition ? Its not OSS, its not 'tech' per se, but its an outlet for their creative drive.
Re: If you don’t have pet projects, I don’t think I want you
#10I used to think this too, but now my position is more nuanced. Certainly you need to have shown you have a passion for technology that goes beyond the norm, but there are other reasons you might not have lots of recent code outside of work. Maybe you have a family. Or maybe you have such a fulfilling current job that you don't feel the need to supplement it with extracurricular activities. Maybe you are interested in…
Maybe your employment contract states that anything you create is owned by your company so there is no code "outside of work." The question then becomes whether that is a contingency that has affected your passion or not.
As would be the case if you worked for some of the Bay Areas biggest names in tech.